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Euthanasia Essay

Below is an essay on "Euthanasia" from Anti Essays, your source for research papers, essays, and term paper examples.

The lawful practice of euthanasia has attracted many philosophers and moral rights activists in the attempt to find a universal moral solution to its controversial practices. Arguments in favour of it are just as credible as those against, making it impossible to grant a definite answer of whether euthanasia is morally permissible or not. Even within the practice, it can be further divided into passive and active euthanasia which in themselves creates turmoil concerning the moral duty and intrinsic value of human life. Can it be said that actively euthanizing a terminally ill patient is more immoral than letting them die? Or more generally, even though both lead to the same outcome, is taking action morally worse than omission from action? Looking at the debate through two different philosophical schools, I hope to elaborate on which of two stances: Kant’s deontology, or the utilitarian perspective, best encapsulates the notorious dispute between pro-life, and I suppose, pro-choice. Whereas one view arguably supports active euthanasia over passive, the other indistinctly opposes the overall notion of assisted suicide altogether. Thus, it is in the opinion of myself, bearing in mind that I personally accept active euthanasia as being morally tolerable, in which I presume that the utilitarian approach is much more suitable in providing clear moral advice to one pondering the morality of euthanasia and the time and place in which it is adequate. In this essay, I will prove how act utilitarianism serves as a much better theory of knowledge when exploring the uneasy grounds of euthanasia, as it provides an obvious and straightforward premise by which every moral act must follow under an egalitarian framework, as well as distinguishing active euthanasia’s moral prominence over passive euthanasia.
To provide the fundamentals of the utilitarian argument regarding euthanasia, I shall begin with its main premise, the greatest happiness principle which states that the,...